Apartment complex officials push back on crime report

Tuesday

Oct 22, 2013 at 12:01 AMOct 22, 2013 at 12:18 AM

Officials with a local student-housing apartment complex believe a recent report on police incidents from the mayor’s Student Housing Task Force gave their complex an unfair black eye. They say the data shows the Retreat at Lake Tamaha is not as dangerous as originally presented.

By Jason MortonStaff Writer | The Tuscaloosa News

Officials with a local student-housing apartment complex believe a recent report on police incidents from the mayor’s Student Housing Task Force gave their complex an unfair black eye.They say the data shows the Retreat at Lake Tamaha is not as dangerous as originally presented.“Candidly, that (report) misrepresented the safety of student housing throughout all of Tuscaloosa,” said James B. Whitley, vice president and chief operating officer of Athens, Ga.-based Landmark Properties, which owns the Retreat at Lake Tamaha. “From us, the safety and the well-being of our residents is something we take very seriously.”Whitley referred to data the task force released Sept. 18, showing 464 calls to police were reported at the Retreat at Lake Tamaha in 2012.Of those calls, 64 were considered serious incidents, according to task force member Robert Parsons.Serious incidents, based on information provided to the task force by the Tuscaloosa Police Department, included burglaries, discharging firearms or any incidents involving a firearm, drugs, homicides, robberies, sexual assaults and thefts involving vehicles.But the remaining 86 percent of the 464 incidents that year were non-violent and often did not result in the filing of a police report.The incidents listed in the task force report included calls for service. Every call to Tuscaloosa Police from an address inside The Retreat was on that list including noise violations (53 incidents), animal control issues (four incidents), parking problems (two incidents) and 53 calls listed as “miscellaneous non-criminal” events.The task force looked at calls to police at eight other non-campus student-housing complexes. “The students who do live here, I feel like they are comfortable,” said Keli Middleton, who has worked as community manager for the 1,306-bedroom Retreat at Lake Tamaha for almost three years. “I feel like we take measures to prevent crime and, if something happens, we have measures to take care of it.”Among the measures Middleton mentioned are security-controlled entrance and exit gates, police officer residents who bring their patrol vehicles home and off-duty police officers who act as security guards.These security methods are not exclusive to the Retreat, and neither are the percentages of serious crimes to miscellaneous or innocuous incidents.The Woodlands of Tuscaloosa, for example, a 1,347-bedroom complex, had 419 calls to police in 2012. But of these, 39 or 9 percent were classified as serious crimes. The rest fell into the “calls for service” categories.This is not to say that parents and students have nothing at all to fear.Among the 64 serious incidents at the Retreat of Lake Tamaha were 13 drug-related calls, eight reports of assaults, 30 reported thefts, three suicides and 10 other serious matters.The Woodlands had two suicides, five assaults, 17 drug-related calls and 22 reported thefts.The Student Housing Task Force was formed by an executive order of Mayor Walt Maddox to evaluate the city’s student rental housing market. It also is studying proposed increases or changes to student housing and it was asked to determine if Tuscaloosa is becoming overly saturated with student-housing complexes and whether the City Council can — or should — do anything about it.